Don’t Do Anything About ItLet anything that happens to you happen and just sit there and watchit. Don’t interfere with it. Don’t do anything about it. Don’t try tocorrect it. Don’t try to ease the pain, the tension, the anxiety. Justsit there and take it. Let the outer situation do anything it wants toyou until you see that it is not doing it at all but that you are. That’swhy you have to remain right where you are until you see what you are doing, not that man, not that woman, not that society — I am doing it all by myself. I am attributing power out there because I am falsely attributing power to my negative self, which doesn’t exist.

Eternal LifeWhy do you anxiously yearn for eternal life?It is because it representsanother kind of existencewhich you think is superior toyour present troubled life.You want something different,which you call everlasting life.If you will simply be happy in your present life,which can be done,

you will never again anxiously yearn foreternal life, you will have it.Your present spiritual health and intelligence is eternal life.Vernon Howard=====================Truth Definitions by Vernon Howard

Here are some true definitions of spiritual words andphrases. In the past, most words in the English language wereused for practical purposes or to direct human beings toward thehigher world and to make our experience go more smoothly on ourlife journey. Their meanings were meant to help guide us so wewould not get lost or misinterpret life’s lessons. In today’sdictionaries some of the original meanings can still be foundbut many definitions have been twisted or distorted or redefinedto suit popular trends of the time period in which we are living.And in some cases, newer definitions are meant to deliberatelymislead human beings. Read the definitions below and work hardto see where these beautiful guides will take you if you willallow it. They will definitely point you in the right directionand help you to find your way out.=====================“There is nothing in the whole universe that represents a threat towho you really are.”=====================“What you want also want you. If you seek the celestial, thecelestial also seeks you. There are no unanswered requests inthe universe. If we do not like what we are receiving, we canlearn to ask for something different.Secrets for Higher Success=====================Q: Discuss the wrong and right way of seeing life.A: You see yourself and life through your emotions, tastes, fears,ambitions, opinions and other distorting and limiting factors. Youcan also see the world with cosmic consciousness, which is above theself and which sees everything clearly, distorting nothing. An examination of the first way of seeing reveals the second way of seeing.From Treasury of Positive Answers, #710=====================How to Be Happy

All loss is simply marvelous! You have nothing to do in your spiritual life but to lose. Forget trying to get anything! Concentrate all together intensely on losing something. This is what it is all about.

In the first place you don’t know what to get. You do not know what to get. It is not in your knowledge. The man out in the desert does not know what it means to find gold in the mountains. What is the point of thinking about gold when he isn’t in the right place to think about gold? What he has to do is lose his desert location. Therefore, put it down well that your objective every day, every minute is to start losing. Losing what?Everything. Now that is not too much to take. Come on, start taking it.

The answer is that the mind must surrender to the spirit. Your mind must give up to the spirit. Now, you don’t know what the spirit is, so say, “I am going to start where I am in surrendering my mind to the spirit.”

So you have to exercise all day long in practicing self-loss. See howlong you can go during the day in simply practical thought and spiritual

self-watching. Now, that means you must not fall asleep. Both of those aregood which leads to self-loss. If you fall asleep, you go into self-thought, self-wailing.

The way you wake up as fast as you can — don’t love the mental movies, or the self-pity. Simply understand that the loss you suffer of them is gain for who you really are. What we’re talking about in keeping this exercise going for as long as you can is studying and putting first the invisible world, not the visible world.

The whole world is both a visible and an invisible world. Even you don’t see the invisible world inside of you. It is the invisible that produced the visible. No nation ever went to war without discussion around a table first. It is the cause of the visible world.

Since that is true, are you going to ever try to change the visible world again? Therefore, pay attention to the cause. Stay in this invisible world every day as long as you can. Then you won’t try to change anything or anyone. Instead, you will want to work from the invisible world and lose.

The invisible world also includes a false world that wants to torment you.[Say] “Ah, I want to get rid of misery.”

How to be happy: lose so much that you at last understand that loss must be your primary power, aim and virtue in life. Then you will know what you’re doing because you will know that the doing of that is correct and will lead to high places.=====================Abandon All Hope

You can never be happy with what you have now. Do you want to know who you really are? How to get back home? You have to abandoned all hope. You can’t believe in any other human being on earth, in human personality. You have to give up hope in finding your answer as you presently are. There is no one thereIt is all only what thought has created — a delusion.

You have to come to the conclusion: “I’m still lost. I’m an awfully unpleasant human being. I’m worried.”

You have nothing but self-sickness. Please abandon all hope. You don’t have to believe in yourself anymore. The only way you will be happy is when you’re back home. Start by knowing you’re not home and Truth will do the rest for you.=====================Be In Charge

You don’t know what to do when you look at another face, even a face you’ve seen a thousand times before, do you? You study them to get your clue. If they’re laughing, you laugh. If they’re solemn, you’re solemn WHY DON’T YOU ESTABLISH THE MOOD WITH EVERYONE YOU MEET. Why don’t yoube 100% spiritual, therefore, 100% in charge of yourself and you take the lead. Watch what happens. The first thing that’ll happen is you’ll be so at ease. You’re not concerned with any wrong reactions that they might have, whether they’re angry or whether they’re trying to trick you because you know what’s going on. You’re in charge of yourself. No one else can be in charge of you.=====================Points to Ponder by Richard Wooldridge (Last updated September 1, 2018)

Richard has been the director of New Life since 1993. He startedattending classes in 1975 and moved to Boulder City, Nevada fromDallas, Texas in 1977. He worked closely with Vernon Howard andothers in the running of New Life. He actually lived at the building in Boulder City where he had many responsibilities.

Here is an article written by Richard from the 2018 Fall Newsletter:

Vernon Howard would periodically quote the New Testament and remind us “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” In other words, there is no middle ground. You can’t sit on the fence. If we remain undecided we have decided to remain ambivalent.In other words, having mixed feelings about someone or something; being unable to choose between two courses of action.

I remember when I was a teenager my father once got very firm about a particular matter with me and told me, “There’s no gray area. You can’t have it both ways.” There can be no neutrality. We either love the Truth or we hate it. You either get it or you don’t get it. You’re either for me or against me. It can’t get any clearer than that.

We all have to make a choice. Most people have made up their mind. They have chosen ordinary life over the higher life. In this work you cannot remain impartial toward it. There can be only one loyalty. It’s either right or wrong; good or bad; real or counterfeit; truth or falsehood; heaven or hell.

One of the things I love the most about this work, these cosmic facts is the definiteness and directness about them. Vernon Howard was never wishy washy or confused or unsure of himself and it was not contrived. It was for real. There is a way we can live our lives where there is never any uncertainty about it. God intended us to be absolutely sure about everything.

We are still fooled by appearances. We still think people are nice because they smile at us or turn on the charm or have perfected the act of being friendly. People in the retail business have to be outwardly cordial because they want your business. They have been trained in business etiquette or customer service or have learned over time it’s probably best to be pleasantwhen doing business if you want someone’s business again. In some cases, you may not want their business again. But it’s a rehearsed or learned behaviorwith an artificial motive. You want something from somebody, so it automatically puts you in a compromising or trading position.

The whole point of this work is to become real. If we’re unnatural we suffer.Recently I was paying for my breakfast and the waitress commented to me, “That lady was rude.” I didn’t know who she was talking about but she said she tried a few times to be ‘nice’ to her but she did not reciprocate. The waitress was bothered by the woman’s unresponsiveness. So she set herself up to feel wronged. “If I’m nice to them, they should be nice to me in return.”So I’m going to feel bad because they did not have the appropriate response.Do you see how we do it to ourselves?

Vernon Howard frequently instructed us to be consciously pleasant, not because we want something from somebody or that we’re trying to achieve a desired result, but simply because it is our natural state. It’s the right thing to do.It’s not good for me to be a perpetual grump.

In summary it is imperative that we start seeing through the superficialityof people. We are neither the grump nor the phonily cheerful one. It’s time to see human beings are masters of mendacity/duplicity.

All right, here is something marvelous and very high that I came across recently from a talk given in July 1980. “There’s no way you can think your way back to the Father’s house because the Father’s house is without personal thoughts. When you understand this, the thought structure collapses and with its collapse you ARE back home.”

When Vernon Howard spoke about being back home, it represents a safe place, an unshakeable inner locale where nothing can disturb or phase us. He once put it this way, “Disorders are healed when lifted to a higher plane of thought than the plane which caused them, for on this higher plane we cease to interfere with the healing.” * It’s above the mind. If we stick with these teachings long enough, we will start to see for ourselves what all this means.It comes to you. The healing occurs by embracing the Truth.

Recently I was pulling and removing thistles on the property. Here in Colorado it is an invasive species. If allowed to they will take over and push out native species of plants. They have spiny stems and thorny leaves which can be painful if pricked by them. The thistles know they aren’t welcome so will sometimes grow next to a rock or under some other kind of bush or vegetation making it more difficult to extract.

You can spray them with poison or you can do the more labor-intensive way which is to remove them manually. You want to try and get the root out which can be as long as the part of the plant which is seen above ground. The best time to pull them out is when the ground is damp or wet or embedded in softer soil. Wearing heavier work gloves you pull them out from the base of theplant. If they have grown in harder soil you may need to use a pick.

It can be tedious work depending on the number of thistles. Mechanical and negative thoughts can be likened to thistles. Bad habits are, as well, like thistles. They need to be removed or they will destroy our lives. They will make life miserable for us if allowed to multiply. We have to get rid of them.

If we are unconscious and unaware of their existence they go undiscovered and do their damage surreptitiously. So what we first have to do is spot or become aware of negative thoughts and feelings and recognize the damage that is being done. We feel bad. That’s our job. Negativity is an invasive species to human beings. It is not normal. God did not make us with negativity. It is something that we have acquired from other undeveloped bipedbeings on this planet through imitation.

So through right effort on our part we can begin to see clearly what must be done. We can refuse to go along with the negativity but we must first detect it. We must see it as negative. Complaining is negative. It is a thistle. Confusion is negative. It is a thistle. Being resentful is negative.
It is a thistle. And so on.

Clarification comes as a result of right effort. There has to be a conscious wish on my part to want to understand. God wants to help us but we must allow him to do that. My interference is getting in the way. The intrusion is my incessant unconscious thinking. An incredible point that was made is “… the Father’s house is without personal thought.” This is a huge clue we’re beinggiven. Let this cosmic fact do its marvelous work to help and heal us. It will if we will acquiesce.* A Treasury of Trueness (#194)=====================

1. What to Do with Yourself Each Moment

“I’ll read a short story to you. There was once a man whoreached his one hundredth birthday. On that day he finallyrealized something. He realized that he had been wrong all his one hundred years. That man achieved the purpose of his life.”

What to Do with Yourself Each Moment=============================End Mental Blocks and Soar Freely

“Blockage is a slam of one part of the mind into another part of the mind. Now that’s what it’s really confined to, to banging and crashing and hurting and crying out in pain, the whole operation takes place right up here inside your own mind. But since we always project things outwardly, we always think the wall, the obstacle is outside in the other person or in a situation. So the first thing we want to know about blockage is that we have to work with it whereit is located, which is inside ourselves.”

“Personal happiness arises from personal goodness. Only when you are an internally good man or woman can you be a carefree man or woman.”

Pathways to HappinessSomething Higher Than Ideas – MP3 CD, Talk # 12=============================The Freedom of Being Good

“Haven’t you noticed the great exhilaration you have when you say something that cuts another person down, or you say something that you know is going to cause the man to get angry or the woman to cry? Can you right now start the cure to this very deeply hidden enemy by remembering as recently as possible when you did just what I’m talking about, where you think wrongly that there is a certain gain, need, necessity, excitement, pleasure, in doing or saying something that will cause suffering or distress to another human being.

I want you to know that you have it there and your wish to hurt another is what is hurting you – they are the same thing.

Inside of you is the fire that wants to hurt someone else andyou yourself are burning from that fire. And I’ll tell youright now, as much as you think that it serves you, it destroysyou.”

The Freedom Of Being GoodSomething Higher Than Ideas – MP3 CD, Talk # 13=============================How to Enjoy Your Life Journey

“There’s so much in the world we don’t see, so much in the invisible spiritual world that we don’t see simply because we’re the passenger in the tourist bus with the shade drawn. The bus is going through so many interesting places, the mountains and the lakes and the broad highways and the passengers sitting there looking straight forward, shade down, not knowing what we could have, what we couldsee, that we could relate to, that would be right impressions, right rewards, if only we would shake our heads and open the window and look out.

But instead of that, we have that familiar thing known as highway hypnosis on our way through life, in which we think the same old thoughts and feel the same old feelings – and dreadfully enough, are content with them.

The secret of having a new life, a new mind, a new nature, thesecret is to be sitting in that bus, hearing the slight soundsabout you and suddenly catch yourself seated in that chair,looking forward and realizing your confinement, realizing your non right involvement with your own journey.

What are you involved in, sitting in a bus, staring at the seatin front of you, the back of it, staring at it, your mind dulland your spirit even duller, nothing real happening, nothingbright happening. I can understand completely why you’re so depressed, why you have no life at all. All you have is a head slightly bent down and your eyes see nothing and there’s a slight whirl in your ears.

I am telling you, all of you here, those of you who are new and the rest of you, I am telling you your condition. You’re seated on the bus staring forward, not knowing what a different life it would be if you would just wake up from your daze long enough to reach over and pull up the shade and look out and see the difference between your thoughts and the bright green beautiful world out there.

What’s it going to take, I’ve asked you that question many times.What’s it going to take to wake you up?”

How to Enjoy Your Life JourneySomething Higher Than Ideas – MP3 CD, Talk # 6
=============================Your Richest Investment in Life

“Now look at this. You are investing every minute whatever your nature is at that minute. So far then, when it’s ten after two, think of all the hundreds and thousands of minutes that have passed since last night, for example, when your nature has put itself out into the world, invested itself in the world and got back exactly the same quality, good or bad, that it put out.”

“The purpose of stories, illustrations, parables is to enable the listener, the audience to go from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the known to the unknown. You know what a river is. You know what a building is. You know what a tree is. You know what a canyon is. Familiar sights, they’re known to your mind. So when you hear a story about a river or a tree, you can put the two together.You can see when you’re told that a tree must be watered, it must be given sunshine, very easily and automatically you sense the illustration that this is what we have to do in the inner spiritual life.

So that’s one purpose, simply to shift from what you already know which is easy to understand to something that is not so easy to understand. And the familiar makes the unfamiliar understandable.That’s one reason.

Another reason, as you have seen in many of the stories andillustrations we’ve had, is to put yourself in the place of thecentral figure. And as you’ve heard these parables, stories,you have sensed have you not, that’s me. That’s me who’s lost out in the desert. That’s me who’s out in a ship and there’s no steering wheel on it and I seem to be at the mercy of the storm and of the currents. We know this is a spiritual class, so we say, “That’s me out on that boat.” And then the solution comes, the man builds his own steering wheel or hoists the sail which guides him back to port.

And there’s one thing about all our illustrations in this classwhich should make you very happy, which is that they all have a happy ending. Because at the end of every story, Truth says, ‘This is it. Now you’ve heard an illustration. You’ve been given truths. Now all you have to do is do the work connected with it.'”

Our Class Aim is to Heal Not to HurtSomething Higher Than Ideas – MP3 CD, Talk # 3
=============================Reach the Ocean of Oneness

“Do you know what we should be doing all day long?Maybe at ten o’clock in the morning, you’re around the home or you’re working out somewhere and all of a sudden you clap your hand to your forehead and you say, ‘How marvelous, I see an obstacle that I never saw before. For example, in talking with people, I see my compulsive need to break in and say something while they’re still talking. Oh, I saw that for the first time.’Seeing it isn’t breaking it, isn’t going around the obstacle,as yet, is it? But it’s so that you can begin to see yourself,as an example, see yourself doing that.

Seeing the obstacle clearly is the beginning of going around it or coming up from under it or whatever it might be so that you are flowing naturally with spiritual gravity instead of saying,‘Oh’, have you ever said, ‘I’m going to break that habit. I’mgoing to break that habit of _’ What? Fill in the blank. Whathappened? The habit continued didn’t it? And what happened after it? Now you feel ashamed of yourself and why did you feel ashamed of yourself? ‘The great powerful me, the King of the world can’t even put a cigarette down.’ You feel humiliated and you also know that any humiliation over that just simply reinforces the habit as well as reinforces your idea that you have a personality, that you have a self that can do anything.

Now listen very carefully to this. Here’s a key thought for tonight. Think of your life as an activity, not a personality. Let that one go real slow and we will take it apart a little bit. Think of your life as a series of actions that are happening, not you as a personality making them happen.”

“You are going to have to begin a long, very serious de-idolization of thought. Now we know it’s practical out in the life there, you use thought to learn how to drive your car, we know all that.I’m talking about trying to think your way above yourself, which is impossible to do. You see, thought cannot understand thought.Thought is incapable of looking at another thought and seeing it and understanding it, because it’s all in the same basket.

In order to understand thought you have to have something outside of it, above it, that can look down and see it and see tens of thousands of thoughts operating all day long and understand why they are that way. One child in the kindergarten can’t instruct anotherchild in kindergarten, they’re all in the same place.”

“Action and movement are everyday habits. We are completely involved in doing things, thinking things, planning things out, in action all the time, which in itself is natural and harmless. But alongside and connected with our wrong movements out in the world and within,
connected with the wrong ones are right ones, but we don’t know the difference.

So this morning, instead of thinking of doing something, which is so confusing if all you have is an intellect, instead of thinking of action, think of not doing something. Think of ceasing to perform certain actions that you presently perform.”

“Now to acquire something loftier than what you are now, you have to see a few things. And one of the most vital things to see is the last thing you want to see. Listen to the phraseI’m going to give you: _awareness of ignorance_.

Did it ever occur to you that you can be aware of your ignorance?You’re not aware of it now, you are it, you’re living it, you’reproud of it, you call your ignorance truth and intelligence.

See you can’t start toward the higher path by talking about your loving spirit, or about your cooperative attitudes toward the world and how kind you are and how nice you are because that simply is an untruth, isn’t it? Awareness of your ignorance in thinking and saying and believing that you have anything good is the beginning of higher wisdom which will set you free.Awareness that you have nothing decent about you at all. Allyour decent thoughts are indecent because they are calculating.Now you don’t want to see that, do you?”

“Don’t go around saying how religious you are and how nice you are and how close you are to spiritual principles. You’re trying to pardon yourself, you’re trying to make something work that can never work. You’re using the mind to try to free the mind, which is only frustration.”

Underneath it all, we want to change our destiny, our destination. We want to change the place we are heading for because you know, feel and are horrified by the subconscious knowledge that you’re heading to a very bad place. You’re not going toward anything that ever isgoing to relieve the heartache. Now to change your destiny, we’re talking about spiritual destiny, to change that, something must overwhelmingly occur to you and when it does you’ll never be the same man or the same woman before. The knowledge that has to come to you is that there is something in this universe that is totally superior to any and every idea that you can think, that you can have.”